Absolutely. OKC IHS does tons of good for the Native community and is the only one in the area. The next closest from the OKC area would be El Reno (~45 min away), but it’s small. Anadarko or Watonga would be next and they’re about an hour away and they’re small, too. Hearing that it was being shuttered to recoup $120K was infuriating, but I shouldn’t have been surprised they were willing to sacrifice lives for what is less than the average cost of a single home in the metro.

Those were both pretty cool reads. We have something similar to La Lechuza called a hatakchaya, which is a kind of witch. The Nahua associating owls with death is interesting, especially since they sound to be more positive than the stories I hear. For Choctaw, the owl is also closely associated with death in the sense they are considered to be harbingers. As you mentioned in a comment, there is actual differentiation. For us, the difference in what owl you see indicates things like the age of the person who will die. The one exception IIRC is the screech owl, which is seen as a sign of a murder has or will happen.

Edit: Also, thanks for pointing out that they’re climate change deniers. I definitely won’t be posting any more articles from them.

I’m Choctaw and we’re from the Southeast United States (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana), so owls are bad news. If you’ve ever watched the show “Reservation Dogs”, there’s a scene where the kids (I think they’re Mvskoke/Creek) catch a glimpse of an owl and react in a typical way for kids raised in a traditional way: This scene (Youtube)